2005 Thunderhill 25-Hour

It's December, and you know what that means...

TONY SWAN

Dec 1, 2005

Well, yes, Christmas. But more important — and much sooner — it means the third annual National Auto Sports Association (NASA) 25-hour sports car race at Thunderhill Raceway Park in northern California.

And as in the first two of these unique around-the-clock-plus events, Car and Driver will be in the thick of the action, providing updates as the hours tick by.

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The car you're looking at here—a race-prepared version of Honda's nifty new Civic Si coupe — is being co-driven by C/D executive editor Tony Swan, teamed with a trio of drivers from American Honda.

But that's only one element of C/D's three-pronged game plan for 2005. While the Civic is circulating the 3.0-mile Thunderhill road course, two other C/D editors are competing in two other rides.

Editor-in-Chief Csaba Csere will be at the wheel of a Subaru WRX STi, an ideal car for the wet conditions expected this year. Tech Director Larry Webster was slated to co-drive a Gale Banks turbo-diesel pickup truck with enough torque to spin the earth backwards, but more on that later.

Willows, CA, Dec. 3 — The dust and confusion of qualifying is over, and with the start of the third annual NASA Thunderhill 25-hour race at hand, we can report that your Car and Driver crew is strategically positioned to cover all the action from both ends of the starting grid.

Editor-in-Chief Csaba Csere, for example, finds himself on the second row of the grid in a 2005 Subaru WRX STi.

Entered by Marshall Pruett, an engineer who served as last year's last-minute Car and Driver crew chief, the Subie posted the fourth quickest time around the challenging 3.0-mile Thunderhill road circuit.

With an alphabetic team name that sounds like it was conceived during the Roosevelt Administration — Team ART/ESX/TCD/ C and D — the Subie is reportedly capable of some 500 horsepower.

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It's also distinguished by a pair of zany front winglets, borrowed from an Indy car and grafted onto the hood, supposedly to create aerodynamic downforce. And it's also distinguished by a teen-aged driver.

Still 10 days away from his 15th birthday and unable to drive on public roads, Auston Harris is nevertheless a veteran racer and one of the quicker of the four who share the car with our man Csere.

Farther back in the field — much farther — we find C/D Technical Director Larry Webster. In fact, Webster's car posted the slowest time recorded during Friday's qualifying session, and Webster has yet to turn a single lap.

We reported earlier that Webster was set to drive a Gale Banks NASCAR-style pickup, propelled by a torque monster turbodiesel V-8. But that statement ceased to be operative just before the race.

The Banks people showed up for a few development runs on Friday, but concluded that the recently finished truck simply wasn't ready for a 25-Hour run. So they withdrew their entry — whereupon our man Webster was adopted by a team from Honda Research and Development, based in Ohio.

The car is a 2005 Civic Type R, a European version of the previous Civic hatchback that was never imported to the U.S.

Race-prepared, its 2.0-liter engine reportedly delivers 280 horsepower, and the car was expected to be one of the quicker entries in the field.

However, that expectation came in for some modification, thanks to quirky brakes. Four laps into Friday practice, the car locked its rear brakes entering a turn, which led to a spin, which led to a damaged radiator.

The crew spent the rest of the day chasing the problems, and managed to patch the car together enough to post a single qualifying lap, 51st of the 51 cars with recorded times.

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However, that total did not include all 65 of the official entries.

For various reasons, 14 other cars failed to post a time, among them the 2006 Honda Civic Si that lists your humble narrator among its four-man driving crew.

It's one of two new Civics entered by American Honda, and neither was scored with an "official" qualifying lap.

The problem wasn't with the machinery. During pre-qualifying practice, the Civics posted lap times among the top 15 in the field.

However, all official timing and scoring is done by transponders, similar to those used in aircraft.

When the car passes that timing line, an electronic recorder picks up the transponder signal and credits that car with a completed lap.

The problem for the Civics was that their transponder signals weren't being picked up, and by the time the team learned about the glitch, qualifying was over.

As a concession, NASA officials agreed to allow the Civics to start behind the slowest car in their class, E1, a class that also includes a pair of brand new factory-entered Mazda MX-5 Miatas.

This places the Civics 46th and 47th on the grid. The Mazdaspeed Miatas, considered to be our arch-rivals, are gridded 15th and 16th overall, and first in class.

Can Honda overcome the Mazdaspeed menace? Can our man Webster overcome adversity and finally record some daytime laps at Thunderhill Raceway? Can El Jefe Csere record faster lap times than his 14-year-old teammate?

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Willows, CA, Dec. 3, 9 p.m. PST — The race is now nine hours old, the sun has long since gone down behind the range of low hills to the west, the temperature is sinking, and so are the hopes of many of the teams competing in the 2005 NASA 25-hour race at Thunderhill Raceway.

A good example of diminished expectations is the 2005 Team Honda R&D Civic Type R, co-piloted by Car and Driver Tech Director Larry Webster.

After a slow start, the hot rod hatchback Honda had begun a steady climb through the standings — until the beginning of the sixth hour, when the Type R pulled into the pits with rear suspension problems. Big ones.

It seems the exhaust pipe was routed a little too close to one of the rear control arm bushings, which responded by melting. And this, in turn, led to disassembly and reassembly of the entire rear suspension.

Much time passed. The Type R returned to the battle, only to return a short time later with severe front brake problems, cured by changing the entire left front brake system.Much more time passed. As we speak, the Type R is back on track, 39th overall, 69 laps off the pace set by the leading Porsche 911.

Other elements of the C/D tripleheader are having better luck. The acronymic Subaru WRX STi — for purposes of brevity, we're calling it Team Alphabet — with Csaba Csere among the helmsmen stands sixth overall, still in a battle with the third-, fourth-, and fifth-place cars.

And the Car and Driver Team Honda Civic Si has fared even better, gradually ascending the standings to eighth overall, and first in its class. Not to mention ahead of the dreaded Mazdaspeed MX5 Miatas.

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Willows, CA, Dec. 3, 11:30 p.m. PST — How many races are only half-finished after twelve and a half hours?

Discounting multi-day grinds like the Paris-Dakar rally, only this one.

And it reinforces the old Yogi Berra theorem: "It's never over 'til it's over."

You could ask Joe Wong about this.

Up until about 9:45 p.m., Wong's J.W. Racing 1993 Porsche 911 was the car to beat, holding an eight lap lead over the second-place BMW 325 of Team Hankook Motorsports, and pulling away at a steady five to ten seconds a lap.

In endurance racing, that's as close to bliss as it gets.

But quicker than you can say accident, racing bliss can evaporate. Which is precisely what happened to Joe Wong's pristine Porsche.

Entering a fast turn, one of the Porsche's tires blew out, sending the car into a succession of spectacular end-over-end flips.

The driver, we're happy to report, walked away. But it will quite some time before Wong's Porsche races again. If ever.

There have been other bumps in the night, though none severe enough to sideline the cars involved.

Mechanical attrition, of course, is a different story. As this is written, two engine swaps are in progress in the Thunderhill paddock, where the temperature hovers at about 30 degrees.

And there are countless repair operations of lesser magnitude. Unfortunately for Car and Driver Tech Director Larry Webster, the best example of lesser maintainance operations is the Honda R&D Civic Type R, which has been in the pits more than on track at this point.

J.G. Pasterjak of Grass Roots Motorsports magazine, one of Webster's co-drivers, summed it up best: "Every solution," he observed, "seems to cause another problem."

At the halfway point the Type R was on jackstands once again, and stood 46th overall.

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Things looked more promising for the other C/D enterprises at Thunderhill.

For example, the Team Alphabet Subaru WRX STi co-driven by Editor-in-Chief Csaba Csere continued to contend for a top finishing position, running fifth overall at the halfway mark.

And the 2006 Honda Civic Si of your humble narrator stands seventh overall, and first in its class, with its sister car close behind.

How long these situations will prevail remains to be seen. Which is why we're here.

But in Bugatti's day, racers were accustomed to virtually non-existent brakes. Today, we depend on them. And when they don't work, the driver is unhappy.

A case in point occurred for one of the Car and Driver cars early this morning, with your humble narrator at the helm of one of the Team Civic Si cars.

The brakes were smoking like a fire in a damp haystack when I climbed in for my Dawn Patrol stint, and entering turn two on my out-lap it became alarmingly clear that there wasn't much braking power in the system.

The clarity came when I couldn't get the car slowed down enough to get through the turn, and did a little driving on the grass at the turn's outer perimeter.

Okay, gotta watch the brakes.

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After a few laps, and a couple more flirtations with the fringes of the track, I thought I'd found a workable rhythm, which entailed a lot of coasting into corners, and using the gearbox to assist the brakes in slowing down.

But about eight laps into the stint, the brake pedal went right to floor entering Thunderhill's turn three, an off-camber right-hander.

This is never a good feeling, and it was clear something had to be done. A race car with no brakes is not only dangerous, it's slow, and at the time this car led its class and was fifth in the overall standings.

I radioed the crew chief, and explained, as calmly as possible, that "I GOT NO BRAKES HERE! REPEAT, NO BRAKES! I'M BRINGING IT IN AT THE END OF THIS LAP!"

The crew chief, with equal calm, asked me to repeat. Which I did. Then he said, "well, you can't come in yet. We're not ready for you."

Ha ha. Crew chiefs are notorious for their Apache sense of humor.

I brought the car in, the crew sprang into action, and in 15 minutes they'd replaced both front brake rotors, which were cracked, and the left front brake caliper, which was broken. And I was on my way again.

But 15 minutes equals about seven laps, so my hopes for a best-in-class finish are pretty much hopeless. As this is written, the C/D Civic is seventh overall, and second in class behind the other Team Civic Si, which is running a remarkable fourth overall.

Meanwhile, Csaba Csere's Subaru continues to contend for overall honors, running solidly in third place, and Larry Webster's ill-starred Honda R&D Civic Type R is on a trailer, ready to go home for an engine transplant.

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THIS JUST IN: Never say "bulletproof." Shortly after filing the update below, the C/D Honda Civic Si suffered brake failure. Although Team Honda effected repairs in about 12 minutes, the car dropped to 7th place overall, a position it still held at 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Willows, CA, Dec. 4, 6:30 a.m. PST — A racetrack looks different at dawn. This could have something to do with the fact that sunlight has begun to creep over the landscape.

But be that as it may, here's how things look in the 2005 NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill.

Number one, the race for first overall is wide open.

As this is written, the Mind Over Motorsports Porsche 911 that led through the wee small hours is on jackstands, with several guys underneath turning wrenches and hollering, which is part of the ritual that goes with changing the car's transmission.

The tranny stuck in fifth gear at about 5:30 a.m., and after driving with only that cog engaged, veteran racer Randy Pobst and his team thought it prudent to effect the change.

"I was able to run decent lap times even with one gear," he said. "But it was risky. The guys think they can change the transaxle in about a half-hour. I'm hoping it's less than an hour. But we still have plenty of time."

When the transmission acted up, the Porsche, which was the second-fastest qualifier in the field and the fastest car still running, held a 12-lap lead over the BMW M3 of Team SSF Autoparts, and the 1974 Porsche 911 of Lost 'N Spaced Racing, the team that claimed second place overall in the 2004 race.

About six laps behind those two, and still in contention to win the race outright, lies the Subaru WRX STi of Team Alphabet, the first of the Car and Driver rides, with Csaba Csere on the five-man driver roster.

Fifth overall, and rapidly climbing toward fourth, is the 2006 Honda Civic Si shared by your humble narrator, trailed by its sister Civic by less than a full lap.

Both Civics have been essentially bulletproof, mechanically speaking, and both are well ahead of anything else in their class.

The closest of the Mazdaspeed MX-5 Miatas is a comfortable 31 laps behind.

At this writing, the lead car has covered 521 laps, or 1563 miles. The Team Alphabet Subaru has logged 1542 miles, while the C/D Civic Si has 1521 miles to its credit.

The third C/D ride — the Team Honda R&D Civic Type R — hasn't fared quite as well. In fact, with 822 miles to its credit, it sits forlornly on jackstands in its paddock space, alone and, at the moment, unloved.

The crew, including C/D Tech Director Larry Webster, has gone off somewhere to sleep, perchance to dream of better races in other cars.